Friday, March 16, 2007

My girlfriend and I recently had a baby daughter and had a lot of trouble coming up with a name for her. We had two choices, but couldn't agree which should be her first name. She then had the idea that we'd play Gin and the first to 100 points would get their choice of first name. Now bear in mind that I actually showed her how to play the game. Also, she proudly told me how she trounced her grandmother at Gin; her grandmother being a little old Jewish lady who has spent her whole life playing Gin and Bridge. Another factor is that when I first taught the missus Gin she went on a hot streak and won a few games off me. Basically what I'm saying is she thought/thinks she's some expert at the game and that I'm a complete egg. So we start playing for who's choice of first name for our little angel and after about three hands I've got about 52 points and she has yet to get on the old scoreboard. The next hand I knock after about six or seven discards and now she flings her cards at my face! And of course our daughter's first name is her choice. Hmmm, I think I need a good tournament director.

That story reminds me of my ex-wife actually. When I got into poker properly (about twelve years ago now) she also took an interest in the holy game and was a pretty good player. Sometimes we would play heads-up, but somehow these games always deteriorated into arguments. We could not bear to lose to each other. But I think our greatest moment as husband and wife was one night when we were staying at a friend's cottage in Wales. We had found a backgammon set and started playing. Now the ol' ex-wife was a pretty good backgammon player too although she didn't like using the doubling cube so we always had to play the whole game through which can be a bit tiresome (we never played for money anyway so it probably didn't matter that much, but I used to find it a bit annoying). I can't remember what happened (I'm sure I was losing) but all of a sudden the board and all the pieces are all over the floor and we're screaming at each other. We never played backgammon or poker against each other again.